


The Weight of Water

by Inisheer



Series: Broken Things Can Be Repaired [1]
Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Drowning, F/F, Near Death Experiences, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, oops it got extra chapters, post-2x19, yes i know we haven't seen it yet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-01
Updated: 2017-05-09
Packaged: 2018-10-26 07:05:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 11,671
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10781964
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Inisheer/pseuds/Inisheer
Summary: Alex never imagined a day would come when she feared to step into the ocean. But even the strongest people get scared.





	1. Here

‘Agent Danvers, go home. You’re on leave.’

‘J’onn, I’m fine,’ Alex protests. Physically, she’s back to normal, and restless after a mere two days of inactivity. She needs to be in the field. She needs something to focus on. And the DEO – doesn’t exactly need her, she understands that, but it doesn’t need its agents scrambling to deal with her unexpected absence either.

And she’s fine. If she doesn’t remember that a glass box without air has been added to her rotating menu of nightmares. If she doesn’t mention it took her ten minutes to step under the shower this morning. J’onn gives her a piercing look, eyebrows raised, and Alex realises he knows anyway. She scowls at him.

‘That’s cheating. Anyway, I can still work.’

‘You shouldn’t have to. It was a traumatic incident and you deserve time to recover. We can handle everything here. Isn’t that right, Supergirl?’

Kara nods. ‘Think of it as a vacation, Alex,’ she says, with a sympathetic smile. 'You've earned one.' Alex wonders if this is payback for all the times she’s tried to keep Kara out of the field. That was different, she wants to say; different when Kara’s wellbeing was at stake.

They’re both wearing expressions that tell Alex they won’t be budged. If she knows J’onn, HR has already signed off on her absence. In triplicate.

She leaves.

Sometimes Alex misses doing more work at the desert base. It would mean riding back along quiet roads, instead of weaving her way through the tail end of rush-hour traffic in National City’s business district. Everything seems brighter and louder than normal and it feels as though the cars are closing in on her, light glinting off the looming hulks of buildings like sunlight on water –

She’s not fine.

Alex stops in a quiet alley, removes her helmet, and leans on the bike until her legs stop shaking. When her breathing is back to something like normal she finds her phone and calls Maggie. Maggie’s back at work as well. She was the one worried, this morning, and Alex hopes her girlfriend is handling it better than she is.

‘Hey, babe.’

‘You’re calling me from the office now?’ asks Maggie. Precinct chatter is vaguely audible in the background.

‘I’m not there. I’ve been benched.’

‘Oh, that sucks. That leave J’onn offered wasn’t negotiable, huh?’

‘No.’

Silence for a moment. Alex kicks a stone and it bounces into a drain. Win.

‘What are you going to do?’

‘I’m off for at least a week. I thought I’d head up to Midvale and see my mom. I was wondering if – if you’d like to come with me.’

The silence this time is longer, more fraught. It comes with an unpleasant fluttering in Alex’s chest that grows until she finally breaks and says, ‘I mean if you don’t want to, that’s –‘

‘No, no, Alex, I’d love to. I’m just trying to figure out if I can swing the time off.’

Alex almost died. Maggie had to watch. Alex has seen people she loves come close to death before, and now she’s been the dying one, and she knows which is harder. But it’s Maggie who is expected to go into work.

She’s speaking again. ‘I should be able to manage at least a couple of days… When will you go?’

Alex takes a deep breath in and lets it out, quietly. Breathe. She knows how to do that. She’s been doing it all her life. ‘Maybe tomorrow.’ She won’t go without Maggie, wouldn’t be cruel enough to separate them for as much as a night right now, but she’s not going to tell her that. If Maggie can’t come she’ll find an excuse to cancel.

‘OK. I’ll come round after work and we’ll make plans. OK?’

‘OK. I’ll see you later.’ There doesn’t seem to be much else to say except, hesitantly, ‘I love you.’

‘Love you too, Danvers.’

* 

Maggie trades in some favours and makes five days off. They arrive in Midvale early the following afternoon, via the coast road. The sunlight sparkles off the sea.

‘So this is where you grew up. Isolated enough,’ says Maggie. She looks awed and out-of-place in her city clothes, at odds with the golden green of half-rural coastal California. Alex struggles to picture her in small-town Nebraska. Maggie fits so well in National City.

But for Alex, this is home.

The house is airy and bright as always. There are papers scattered across the kitchen table; they’ve caught Eliza in the middle of a project. She drops it to greet them, wrapping Alex in a hug so tight it would rival one of Kara’s. Maggie bashfully edges away, but doesn’t make it far before Eliza turns and engulfs her in a similar death-grip. When she relinquishes her hold she leaves her hands on Maggie’s shoulders, looks at her very seriously, and says, ‘Thank you for saving my daughter.’

Maggie is doing a good impression of a deer in headlights. Alex coughs. ‘Mom! Don’t scare my girlfriend!’

‘Oh, pfft, Maggie’s made of stronger stuff than that – but where are my manners? I must show you round the house. You’ll be sharing Alex’s room, I suppose? How was the drive?’

They have lunch in the kitchen, over a lively conversation about the tricky problem Eliza has been trying to solve (Maggie looks back and forth between mother and daughter with amusement); then Maggie and Alex excuse themselves. The weather is so gorgeous, it would be a crime not to hit the beach, and Maggie hasn’t seen it properly yet.

‘You’ll be all right?’ she asks, once they’ve changed into beach-appropriate attire.

‘Why wouldn’t I be?’ says Alex.

Maggie smiles at her, gently, but with dimpled concern. ‘It’s just. That’s a lot of water.’

‘I’ve been swimming in it my whole life,’ says Alex. She gives Maggie a kiss on the cheek. ‘I can handle it.’

She leads Maggie out by the back steps, the old wooden ones, full of splinters for the unwary. As a child she ran them carelessly but Alex treads lightly now, fingers twined in Maggie’s, and down onto the sand. There are few things as grounding as the silken way it slides beneath her footsteps. Below the high tide line it turns solid, cool and damp, and Alex digs her toes in and doesn’t think about icy water or the tang of metal because this water is warm and inviting and the air tastes of salt.

She pulls her T-shirt over her head. Turns to grin at Maggie, who raises her hands. ‘Woah. You’re going in?’

‘Yeah. Why not?’ Alex challenges, unfastening her shorts.

Maggie mutters something that might have been, _not even going to go there_ , and shrugs. ‘Sure. Whatever.’

Alex wades in a few steps, then turns and holds her hands out. Maggie hesitates. ‘What,’ teases Alex, ‘Did you forget your swimming costume?’

‘Yes. I did.’

‘Bra and panties works too.’

‘You trying to get me to strip, Danvers?’ says Maggie, with that head-tilt. She sighs, kicks off her sandals, and walks in otherwise fully clothed. She glares at Alex. ‘It’s cold!’

‘You haven’t seen cold,’ says Alex. She traces her fingers over Maggie’s palms as her girlfriend reaches her, then pulls away, heading out further from the beach. The waves lap around her ankles, then her calves, and the sensation of water growing steadily deeper is somehow unsettling so when the waves get past her knees Alex dives in.

The world is a blur of water and light. There is water around her mouth and nose and she knows how to hold it off but it wants in, it wants in, it wants _in._ She needs to breathe but she’s sucking in water and air is –

Alex flips over, palms slamming against the sandbank, knees flying out of the water.

Right here, the air is right here, _breathe._ She’s fine. She’s fine but she’s not because she’s spitting up salt and Alex Danvers hasn’t been scared to put her head underwater since she was two years old learning to blow bubbles and she can’t start now, she can’t, she _can’t,_ but she thinks part of her got left behind in that chamber and she thought for a moment she was still there.

Maggie is a splashing figure hurrying towards her, distant, suddenly close. ‘Alex!’ She holds out an arm and Alex takes it by the elbow, letting herself be pulled upright, pulled close, both of them shaking. Maggie’s shorts and the bottom half of her T-shirt are sodden. The water is only waist deep.

They wade back to the shore, to the edge, where they sit just above the retreat of light skittering wavelets. Alex wants to be strong but she is shaking too much to do anything but put her head on her knees and close her eyes. Breathe. Her breathing is harsh and Alex hates herself for the weak, hunched thing the water can so easily turn her into. Somehow the ocean’s sigh is still calming. Her hands curl into fists, helplessly. She wants to lash out but there’s nothing here to hit. Nothing but sand and water and sky.

Maggie kneels beside her. Her cool fingers drift across Alex’s skin: they trace her vertebrae, tickle her shoulderblades, then settle gently on her upper arm. Alex leans against her side without looking up.

‘I always forget how big the ocean is,’ says Maggie, after a while.

‘You must have seen it before.’

‘Yes. Not as often as you have.’

The tide is rising. One bold wave nips at Alex’s toes and scurries away. Alex doesn’t move. She’s not shaking now, with either fear or anger. She’s breathing.

‘Do you want to go back to the house?’

‘Not yet.’ She can’t let her mom see her like this.

‘It’s OK.’

Now Alex turns to look at her and says, in a very small voice, ‘You don’t understand. I have to be able to swim. I can’t do my _job_ if I can’t swim.’

‘I know,’ says Maggie, and Alex can see that she does. She’s not going to like what Alex has to say next.

‘I need to go back in.’

‘Alex.’

There are more of them now. They’re growing braver, the little waves. Alex forces herself not to flinch. She swallows and says, ‘Fear grows if you let it. Aren’t you supposed to get back on the horse? You worked in a stable. You’d know.’

Maggie gives her a squeeze. ‘I know you don’t try to ride a crazy horse. You let it calm down first. It’s understandable that you’re scared.’ She tilts her head. ‘We haven’t really talked about what happened, have we?’

‘I’d prefer to forget about it.’

This makes Maggie smile sadly. She looks out at the sea, leaning her head against Alex’s shoulder, and dips her hand into the water as it splashes past. It sparkles at it runs through her fingers. ‘I don’t think it’s that easy, babe.’

Alex shakes her head.

‘Hey. Take your time. Whenever you’re ready.’ She strokes Alex’s damp hair. Alex can feel salt drying on her skin and it occurs to her that bringing Maggie to her home, to her beach, should not have been anything like this. Maggie kisses her shoulder. ‘Whenever you’re ready.’

The water is a constant around them now. Alex says, ‘Can we maybe – take a walk?’

‘Sure. We can do that.’

* 

They follow their lengthening shadows back up to the house. Eliza glances from her work to ask them if they had a good swim. Alex’s answer must be unenthusiastic enough to draw concern, because she frowns and says, ‘Is something wrong?’

‘It’s OK, Mom,’ says Alex, and she’s too tired to tell if her mother believes her or not, but either way Eliza doesn’t inquire further.

‘All right.’ She looks down at the sweep of papers, sighs, and begins to sweep them aside. ‘I should get started on dinner. What do you girls think of risotto?’

‘Do you want some help, Eliza? I've been told I make a great risotto.’

‘You can cook?’ asks Eliza, looking at Maggie like she’s sprouted wings and a halo. Maggie nods. Eliza raises her hands to the heavens – ‘Finally! One of them can cook.’

‘I can cook!’ Alex protests.

‘You can make stir-fry, babe. That’s not cooking,’ says Maggie, wrapping an arm around Alex’s waist.

Eliza laughs. ‘It’s more than I’ve ever managed to teach her. Some help would be lovely,’ she says.

Alex is relegated to the table while they work. She idly scans her mother’s notes, listening to the murmur of their conversation. Eliza likes to get to know her daughters’ partners, one-on-one, and grateful as she is for Maggie’s presence Alex would appreciate a moment to collect her thoughts by herself; so when the biting sting of chopped onions fills the space, she takes the opportunity to make her excuses and retreats upstairs.

The bedroom Alex once shared with Kara faces away from the ocean and right now she wants to see it, so she heads into the study. It’s a cosy space at the corner of the house, the window struck out from the sloping attic walls. Books everywhere. When she was small Alex would drag the atlases and anatomy tomes from the lowest shelves and read them stretched on the floor, while above her Jeremiah worked at their old mud-grey desktop computer. Later she wasted hours mastering Minesweeper and Pinball on its replacement, and finally introduced them to Kara along with the wonders of Google and Wikipedia. Nowadays the computers have been junked in favour of laptops with ten times their power and Alex climbs onto the desk to kneel by the window, resting her arms against the sill. The sun is low on the horizon and has turned sky and water matching shades of gold.

She recognises Maggie by her footsteps. Alex nods vaguely at the words, ‘Dinner’s ready.’

Neither of them moves.

‘I was so scared,’ says Alex, into the silence, and she hears Maggie’s breath hitch. She doesn’t turn round. The light is starting to fade, the sky turning that hazy cornflower blue of dusk. ‘Not the whole time, not when I could still tell myself you guys would find me or I’d get myself out, but – right at the end. I was terrified.’ She can still feel the water pressing down on her. Water is meant to be light, splashing out into air, but this water seemed to grow slow and dull as the air retreated until there was only the wire mesh and the water rising past it, so cold, dragging her down. It churned but it was still because there was no edge of it to move; and Alex inside it, struggling, aware of exactly how long she could hold onto the oxygen in her lungs. She knows it can’t have been more than a minute or so between her final gasp and loss of consciousness, but time crawls when your brain is working in a frenzy at the tipping point between life and death –

Breathe.

‘I know I’m supposed to say, you were the last thing I thought of, or Kara. I mean I did. I was holding on for you. But right at the very end all I could think was, _This is it. I’m going to die._ And, _I don’t want to die._ ’ Alex breathes. ‘Then everything went black.’

She turns around, settling herself cross-legged atop the desk. She fumbles for Maggie’s hand and clutches it tight. ‘Then you were there, and I hadn’t. Died, I mean. And I thought it was over.’ Breathe. ‘Now I can’t sleep. I have to psych myself up to get in the shower. Apparently I can’t swim. How the hell does some asshole with an agenda have the power to take swimming away from me? It was supposed to be _over_.’

Breathe.

‘It will be. You’ll get through this.’ Maggie places her free hand on Alex’s knee. ‘Who would believe talking actually helps?’

‘I don’t. I feel worse now,’ says Alex. She’s not completely joking. Maggie laughs anyway, gently, and pulls Alex’s head towards her chest. Alex reaches round and twists her hands in the back of Maggie’s shirt. She feels a kiss planted on the top of her head.

‘It helps. You know you’re not alone.’ Maggie pauses. ‘Remember, I’m here to help you heal too.’

It’s this, finally, which makes Alex cry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I TOTALLY FORGOT ABOUT CHYLER LEIGH SINGING "BREATHE" ON GREY'S UNTIL I WAS LIKE 2,000 WORDS IN I'M SORRY
> 
> Comments feed this author's soul. Concrit is fibre and good for the astral digestion! (Alternatively, tell me why you hated it.)
> 
> EDIT: Some minor edits to fit in with the actual 2x19 canon. Since I'm adding to the thing anyway, it appears…


	2. We

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Let's go back a few days, shall we?

Alex rolls her shoulders, flexing the space where her tracker should still lie. She’s barely noticed it for years but now she’s acutely aware of the absence. She wonders if she should find it freeing, to know that for once the DEO can’t follow her around the planet, but in truth it’s simply unsettling. Not because of recent events: they couldn’t find her _with_ the tracker. Alex has always known the device to be easily tricked or blocked or removed. She’s always known not to put too much faith in it.

But being without it makes her feel cut adrift, somehow.

Maggie is the opposite. Grounding. Walking back towards Alex now with the kind of grin most people wear after being on the receiving end of the patented Kara Danvers hug. She slings an arm around Alex’s waist, not, Alex thinks, to hold her up but to reassure herself that her girlfriend – _the woman she loves –_ is still there. Then again, they’re both dead on their feet, running on a cocktail of adrenaline and concentrated willpower, and the support is appreciated.

‘Home?’ says Maggie.

‘God, yes.’

Winn catches them in the middle of saying their goodbyes, gushing over Alex’s trick with the camera wires. ‘He obviously had a contingency in case we managed to isolate the camera feed –’

‘Winn.’

‘That was my fault, I let him ping me to the wrong address –’

‘Winn.’

‘But we’d never have got that far if you hadn’t given us the camera in the first place, so, you know, I really wasn’t much help –’

‘Winn!’ Alex gives him a shake and he blinks at her. ‘It’s OK. I got knocked out in an elevator.’

‘Yeah, but you had no way to see that coming – oh.’

Maggie gives her a gentle tug, rolling her eyes. She wants to get out of here. Alex shoots her a reassuring look, then says to Winn, ‘You did everything right. It happened to be mostly useless, but you did do everything right.’

Winn laughs unsteadily. ‘I’m glad you’re back safe.’

‘Yeah, me too. Now go get some rest. How much coffee have you had in the last twenty-four hours?’

‘Fourteen cups,’ says Winn. He sounds proud of this. Alex knows both that it’s a personal record and exactly what it’s doing to his heart. She sighs and holds up a hand for him to high-five. ‘Congratulations. Don’t drink any more.’

Winn nods to Maggie, who raises her eyebrows pointedly. ‘You know what, I’ll just – um – bye!’

‘Now can we go?’ says Maggie. ‘I want to get to bed.’

‘Eager to get me into bed, Sawyer?’

‘Oh, always, Alex, when wouldn’t I –’ The thought is interrupted by a yawn. ‘Actually, you know what? It can wait.’

‘Later,’ Alex murmurs into her ear.

It’s somewhere past four o’clock, too late to be night but too early to be morning: the time when the world seems only half-real. They meet almost nothing on the road on the way to Alex’s apartment. Despite their shared exhaustion, they agree without discussion to take the six flights of stairs. Alex stares at the elevator as they hurry past it. Only her elevator. She’ll take down tomorrow. Or maybe the next day.

A couple of DEO agents are still there, doing a final sweep of the apartment for bugs. She waves them away when they try to stand to attention and barrage her with details. ‘Is there anything I need to know right now? Is the place clear?’

‘Far as we can tell, ma’am.’

‘Then email me the report.’

She shuts the door behind the agents with relief. Just her and Maggie, in Alex’s apartment, the rest of the world at bay. They make it to the bed, kicking off shoes and tossing jackets in a heap on the chair. Maggie makes the effort to change into pyjamas and brush her teeth. Alex barely tugs off her pants before crawling under the comforter. Her girlfriend (the woman she loves) joins her a minute later and Alex reaches out to pull her close, nestling her head in the crook of Maggie’s shoulder, already half-asleep.

*

Alex wakes starving, to the sound of midday traffic and her own stomach’s gurgles. Stifled giggles from Maggie.

‘Are you laughing at me?’

‘No.’

‘Liar.’ Alex finally bothers to open her eyes. ‘How long have you been awake?’

‘A while.’

‘Did “a while” think of making any breakfast?’

‘My turn to make breakfast, is it?’

Alex pokes her. ‘I did almost die, Maggie.’

‘Oh, you are _not_ going to play that card,’ scoffs Maggie. Whatever she’s planned to say next vanishes into, ‘Oof!’ as Alex flips her, pinning her to the bed, and leans in for a kiss. Maggie’s lips meet hers and Alex considers skipping breakfast, but – no. Apart from a protein bar in the DEO medbay, she’s eaten nothing since the night before last. Skipping breakfast is not an option.

‘No,’ she says, ‘I’m not. But it actually is your turn.’

‘Alex,’ says Maggie, softly. ‘You almost died.’ There’s concern in her eyes, concern Alex doesn’t like or need. She doesn’t want Maggie to be worried, not now, not when everything is finally so _good._

‘And?’ she laughs.

Maggie shakes her head with a smile. ‘Never mind,’ she says, and extricates herself to climb out of bed while Alex tugs the covers over her head again. Maggie might grumble about it but she does make breakfast to Alex’s specifications: bagels with bacon and maple syrup and cream cheese and scrambled eggs. ‘And raspberry jam!’ she calls through as an afterthought, the smell of bacon already wafting from the hob.

‘You’re testing me, Danvers,’ Maggie shouts back.

When she arrives with the tray, Maggie frowns into the light and nods towards the curtains. 'Hey. Can you close those?' she asks.

It's pretty bright. 'Sure,' says Alex, going to drag them shut. Plenty of light still filters through, but it's less intense, and the sound of midday traffic below is muffled.

They eat curled up in the big bed, with moments of quiet conversation. Maggie has plain bagel and eggs and Alex tries, without luck, to tempt her into trying the greasy, sugar-filled concoction on her plate. ‘Are you sure you don’t want any?’

‘I thought you were hungry,’ Maggie retorts, taking a neat bite of her bagel.

She is – ravenous – and despite having twice as much food Alex wipes her plate clean before Maggie. Comfortably full, she leans back to watch Maggie eat, haloed by dust motes and so beautiful Alex never wants to look away.

‘What?’ says Maggie.

‘Nothing.’

They kick the plates away, drain their coffee mugs, and move magnetically towards each other. Alex cradles Maggie’s cheeks in her palms, light kisses deepening, feels the buzzing under her skin everywhere Maggie touches her. They separate to let Maggie pull Alex’s tank top over her head, then sink together into the bed. It’s Maggie’s turn to pin Alex, straddling her, lips trailing down her jaw and neck. Alex closes her eyes to focus on the fluttering touch and lets out small noises of satisfaction. Her hand reaches for Maggie’s to twine their fingers together.

It amazes Alex that she can be so used to this; that she can know somebody else’s body so well, and her own, and think nothing of it. At first she was sure she’d never get over the sheer excitement of having a girlfriend, but Maggie was right: things stopped being shiny after a while. It’s no longer a whirlwind of hormones and impatient desperation; it’s no longer need and fear and transfixing bliss mingled into one. Now being here is familiar, and fits like a well-worn jacket.

She thought she’d miss the shininess. Turns out this is better.

(It’s still blissful.)

Alex wonders how you go from the big declaration of love to saying it every day. She thinks you start by trying it. So she presses the declarations of love into Maggie’s skin, placing them there like wax seals, and Maggie whispers it back until there are no more words.

Afterwards, exhausted and hazily content, they lie sprawled across the sheets with Maggie’s head resting on Alex’s torso. Alex strokes her hair absently. It must be mid-afternoon, now, or later. The light has moved round to illuminate a different corner of the room. It’s warm enough to make Alex think of lazy siestas in European cities, languid and soporific. All that’s missing are the cocktails.

‘So Gertrude,’ says Maggie, giving Alex a nudge.

‘Oh, god.’ She laughs. ‘Is that a weird name? It was the first thing I thought of. I don’t know where it came from.’

‘You haven’t thought about it?’

‘Not about names,’ says Alex. She’s thought about them getting a pet together plenty of times: a big, boisterous dog, or a cat to sit on her chest and purr like at her Midvale home. Sometimes in her wildest fantasies she’s thought about… She’s not sure children are something a DEO agent, the sister of Supergirl, can necessarily afford. Until recently they seemed so far removed from her life that she’s never really considered it. Now it seems like an impossible thing but bizarrely, and for the first time ever, an impossible thing she might actually want.

Maggie would make a great mom.

But none of them, the imaginary pets or the imaginary children, ever had names. Alex says, ‘If you don’t like it we can go with something else.’

‘Babe. I do not break the promises I make to my girlfriend when she’s standing knee-deep in water and I’m scared I’ll never see her alive again.’

She stops. Alex’s hand stills, and she hears Maggie’s breath catch, both of them aware she’s just voiced something too forthright and raw for the current conversation. Alex reaches round to touch her cheek, and feels Maggie breathe out again with a shudder.

‘Gertrude’s sticking,’ Maggie finishes.

Alex hums eloquently. ‘Maybe just “Gert” if we get a male dog.’

She doesn’t think they will. Not if it’s a choice. Gertrude suddenly has a presence, a reality, almost as if she’s already in the room with them. Not an immediate reality – Alex doesn’t need to rush out and buy a dog basket right this minute – but a promise belonging to the not-too-distant future. They’re really going to do this. It’s a thrilling idea.

‘I’ve always wanted a dog,’ she says. ‘I used to ask if we could get one, growing up. My mom prefers cats and Dad wasn’t interested. Eventually they agreed I could have a dog if I could be totally, one-hundred-percent responsible for looking after it. Then Kara arrived.’

‘Was a sister better than a dog?’

‘Not very different. She used to follow me around all the time and break things.’ Maggie laughs at this. Alex continues, ‘At least she came toilet-trained.’

Maggie rolls off Alex’s stomach, resting herself on her elbows, and Alex sits up slightly to look at her. ‘Will you want to get a puppy?’

‘I’d like to,’ says Alex, slowly. ‘I don’t know. We both have really hectic lives. A puppy needs a lot of time and attention.’ It’s not the effort she’s worried about – Alex knows about hard work – but the time commitment and absence of structure. A puppy is practically a…

‘So does a rescue, and most older dogs are rescues.’

Maggie has spoken with an authority that makes Alex take note. ‘Your dogs were rescues?’ Maggie’s mentioned her family’s dogs before, their breeds and personalities and when the Sawyers owned them, but never where they came from. Alex didn’t think to wonder.

‘Yeah. My dad was really good with them. He used to say you couldn’t blame a vicious dog, or one that was scared of people. It was just the way it had been raised.’

Maggie’s dad. The man who threw her out at fourteen. ‘Huh,’ says Alex.

‘Well. He was right.’ Maggie picks at the sheets. ‘My aunt had a cat. I think he was the most bad-tempered thing I ever met, except with her. He used to claw at my ankles.’

‘Is that why you’d rather have a dog?’

Maggie thinks for a moment. ‘Cats are good too, if they’re friendly. I miss having a dog.’

Alex wriggles down into the bed, and Maggie crawls up towards her so they’re face-to-face. ‘A puppy,’ says Alex, with a kiss to the corner of Maggie’s mouth. ‘Called Gertrude.’ Something else occurs to her. ‘Where will we keep her?’

Maggie’s eyes go wide.

It’s a running conversation. They’ve never converged on one place or the other. Alex’s apartment has the better bed and the better shower and is more convenient for the station. Maggie’s is cosier and closer to the DEO. On at least one occasion Alex has been called into work for an emergency, telling her girlfriend not to wait up, and crashed at Maggie’s place by herself after the situation was resolved. She doesn’t like waking Maggie in the middle of the night, not because she gets grumpy (which she does, but it’s adorable) but because it feels like a big production, the way sharing a bed did at first but has since ceased to, and without the shininess because there’s never a lot of shininess to collapsing from exhaustion at three in the morning. In certain ways they’re still working their way into each other’s lives. It’s not unusual yet to spend a night apart, though Alex can see the day looming when it will be.

‘You know what,’ she says, moving her hand to illustrate, ‘That’s possibly a conversation we should have _before_ the one about getting a dog.’

‘You know, you might be right, Danvers,’ says Maggie. Then, ignoring it, ‘What kind of a dog?’

‘Mmm. A big one.’

‘Obviously. I’ve always liked German shepherds.’

The police dogs. What a surprise. ‘You’ve worked with them on the force?’ Alex checks, and Maggie nods. Alex thinks about a big black-and-tan dog running to retrieve a ball or lounging with her head on Maggie’s lap. It’s a good image. ‘Yeah. I could go for a German shepherd.’

‘What’s your favourite breed?’

‘Huskies.’

‘Oh, they are beautiful dogs,’ says Maggie, almost wistful. ‘I’d never have thought of that.’

From there the conversation meanders lazily for a while, until Alex loses the thread of it in the brown of Maggie’s eyes. She traces a line up her arm, murmuring some agreement to a complaint about a colleague, then pulls back slightly with her lip between her teeth. ‘Maybe you need something to take your mind off him,’ she suggests.

‘Oh, yeah?’ says Maggie, already reaching for Alex’s hip.

‘Something like this,’ says Alex, which is a line Maggie probably deserves to smack her for, but she kisses back instead.

(The word “amazing” is appropriate, and it is used. Repeatedly.)

* 

Alex is loading the dishwasher when she hears Maggie, facing the open fridge, make a small noise of displeasure.

‘What is it, babe?’

‘You’re out of milk.’

‘Normal milk or that almond stuff you made me buy?’

‘Both.’

Alex does a mental tally: milk, bread, yogurt, various vegetables (the old ones have gone off), orange juice, chocolate for the stash Kara doesn’t know about or is politely ignoring. She needs to do a grocery run. Check her emails. Call her mom, since their small-hours phone call from the DEO medbay was abrupt and insufficient. Speak to Kara. She kicks the dishwasher mostly closed and heads to the island counter, where Maggie passes her a mug of coffee. Black coffee. Even almond milk would be an improvement.

‘Can I stay over tonight, or are you going to throw me out?’ says Maggie. Normally at this point, after a lazy day in bed or on the couch, they’d be thinking of going their separate ways. But normally they’d have spent the whole night together, rather than just a quarter of it. And normal – the old normal – didn’t include declarations of love.

‘I don’t know. You make terrible coffee,’ says Alex, pretending to think. ‘But you’re cute. You can stay.’

Maggie makes an odd face, quickly hidden behind her mug. Alex realises she hasn’t thought everything through. She _does_ want Maggie to stay tonight. She wants to kiss her and hold her and bask in the newfound certainty of love. The problem is that right now, in the hours before that, she has a ton of things to do and none of them particularly involve Maggie.

No, that’s all right. Maggie must have things to do too. Alex says, ‘Will you be heading back to your place at all?’

Maggie pauses. ‘Yeah. I probably need to pick up some things, and I should check on the boys.’ The boys: her bonsai trees and other plants. ‘Do you want to come with me?’

Which is a very, very odd thing for Maggie to say indeed.

Alex thinks of that look on Maggie’s face a minute ago. If she had to name it, she’d call it _relief._

‘Maggie. Are you okay?’

Maggie aims a smile in her direction. There are no dimples and no creases around her eyes. ‘I’m fine,’ she says.

‘You know I’m not going to vanish if you turn around for five minutes?’

‘Ugh,’ says Maggie, dropping her head into her hands. ‘Was it that obvious? I’m sorry. I know I’m being paranoid.’

‘Slightly,’ says Alex.

'I'm used to worrying about you but, you know, you expect to be left alone in your own home.'

Alex moves to put a put a hand on Maggie’s back, moving close to look her in the eyes. ‘Getting kidnapped twice in one week would be _horrific_ bad luck,’ and Maggie manages to laugh at this. ‘It’s normal to be freaked out. But once you start letting it keep you from living your life, it’s hard to make that go away.’

Maggie nods. ‘What about you? Aren’t you … freaked out?’

‘It’s hardly my first near-death experience,’ says Alex. Then she hears the words and adds, ‘Okay, that wasn’t very reassuring, was it?’

‘No.’

‘I’m still here. I plan to continue being here. For you, for Kara, for all those firsts you talked about – for Gertrude.’ The smile she receives this time is weak but it’s genuine.

She points Maggie towards the shower and dresses herself to the background noise of the running water. 

*

The water is heavy, thick as treacle and harder to move through, because the problem isn’t the water, the problem is her own limbs, which won’t listen to her commands, and now she hasn’t moved but the water is over her head and she sees Maggie and Kara, standing on the other side of the glass, mouths open and cheeks hollow and she can’t tell if she is the drowned thing or they are and and and -

And Alex wakes with a quiet gasp.

She’s in her own room. In her own safe, warm bed. She sits up, shakily, with her pulse throbbing through her skull. That’s just biology, physiology, the jolt of being dragged out of REM sleep and the receding fear of the nightmare. She’s fine. She’s fine.

Maggie rolls over, blinking up at Alex in the dark. Alex shushes her. ‘It’s okay. Just a bad dream.’ She lies back down, wrapping her arms around Maggie and burying her face in her girlfriend’s hair.

They’ve almost got their breathing back to normal when they hear the _whoosh_ and a light _thud._ Both women stiffen, looking at each other, ready to move in a heartbeat if necessary.

A familiar voice rings out. ‘Alex?’

Alex relaxes, and sees Maggie do the same. ‘It’s all right, Kara,’ she calls back, already rolling out of bed. She brushes Maggie’s hand in reassurance, grabs her dressing gown from the chair, and pulls it on over one of Maggie’s T-shirts as she heads into the main living space. Her little sister is in Supergirl costume but her manner is all Kara Danvers and she looks oddly forlorn.

‘I was on a night patrol and I was – I was listening out for your heartbeat – I didn’t mean to barge in but I, there was something wrong –’

‘I had a nightmare, Kara,’ says Alex. ‘It’s nothing new.’

‘Right. Of course.’ She glances at something behind Alex, and Alex turns to see Maggie at the end of the bed. ‘Maggie’s got you, anyway.’

‘Kara.’

‘I should – I should get back to the patrol,’ says Kara, and she’s gone before Alex can respond with more than a frustrated groan.

‘What was _that_ about?’ she asks Maggie, who shrugs helplessly, and tugs her back to bed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So… yeah.
> 
> Oops-I-tricked-myself-into-writing-a-multi-chapter-fic-by-telling-myself-it-would-be-a-one-shot yeah. (It's fine. It's all good. I'm not working on ten other things. *Whistles innocently, pushes plot bunnies under the bed*)
> 
> Remember: every time you leave a comment, a writer gets their wings.
> 
> EDIT: Just a couple of minor things to make it fit better with what I did in Chapter 3.


	3. Stand

Alex slips out of bed while Maggie is still asleep, moving carefully in the half-light. She’s never spent a room in the guest bedroom before. She can’t decide if it’s more or less strange than it would be to share her childhood bedroom with Maggie, but it’s certainly less cramped. Alex mulls over the possibility of sharing a single bed with Maggie as she rummages through her duffle bag: it would be a good excuse to snuggle, but she ends up with a small enough share of the blankets as it is.

The bathroom has never changed. Her mother’s not an interior design person. Alex perches on the side of the claw-footed bath, planting her soles on the base of the tub to let the water run round them. She turns the tap on before she can think too hard about it and watches it glug into the bath with clenched teeth. No. She’s not there. She’s _here_ , home, in Midvale, and the water is hot, not cold.

Wait. Too hot. Alex hisses and pulls her feet out. She spends the next ten minutes fiddling with the taps to reach the perfect temperature (about half a degree below scalding). She’s out of practice; it’s a long time since she took a bath. Her apartment in National City doesn’t have one. Alex has never been the candles-and-bath-oils type.

Alex strips, steels herself, climbs in and finds herself staring at half-healed scrapes on her knees while her toes scream at her that they’re burning. By the time all her extremities have acclimated to the temperature the water feels unpleasantly lukewarm. Alex, muttering at the tap under her breath, tries to stir in more hot water and ends up with the tub threatening to overflow.

Okay, she decides. This is, all round, a bizarre experience. People do this to _relax_?

But she’s not here to relax.

Alex lowers herself until her chin is touching the water. Take a deep breath, she tells herself, and plunge. Next one. Right, the one after that. This is easy, a game she’s been playing all her life, blowing bubbles for Eliza in a bath full of plastic fish. There’s no reason she shouldn’t be able to do it.

In fact she’s sure she _can_ do it but she knows she _won’t_ and that feels a lot like _can’t._

There’s still salt in her hair from yesterday.

Alex swears at herself in three different languages, yanks the plug out by the chain, and reaches for her towel.

* 

‘I got an email from J’onn,’ Maggie says, peeling off the dressing with sure fingers.

‘Hm? What did he say?’

‘First of all, that he hopes we’re enjoying our vacation.’

J’onn J’onzz has been on this planet for three hundred years and Alex is half-convinced he hasn’t taken a single vacation in all that time. Maybe Kara gave him the idea. ‘This isn’t exactly a vacation.’

‘I don’t know, babe, we’ve got the sun, the sand, the sea…’

‘My mom expecting me to do the dishes,’ Alex finishes.

Maggie laughs. ‘Maybe I’m on vacation and you’re not.’ She tosses the old dressing aside and reaches for a clean one. Alex is tempted to tell her not to bother – the wound is minor and healing well – but she doesn’t want to interrupt the concentration on her girlfriend’s face. Instead she twists to look at it.

‘They’re going to ruin all your nice handiwork when they put the new one in.’

Lips pursed, Maggie says, ‘The DEO cleared Rick’s apartment.’

‘Oh. What did they find?’

‘Surveillance equipment. Heavy weaponry. Chemicals they think helped him resist J’onn’s mind-reading.’ She pauses, frowning, something distant in her eyes. ‘Every newspaper article, every report, every goddamn tweet about Supergirl since the plane crash. Photos of Kara. Photos of us, everywhere. He told me he’d been watching you for a year, did I mention that?’

‘No. I don’t think you did.’

‘Well, he was.’

The new dressing has been smoothed into place. Alex pulls up her shirt and reaches for Maggie, who is wearing the closed-in, sullen look, puffing her cheeks out, that means she’s on the edge of tears.

‘A whole year, Alex,’ Maggie repeats, voice cracking. ‘Spying on you. On the street. In your apartment, in _our_ apartments. I know you don’t want to talk about it, but how can you be so calm about this?’

‘I’m not calm. I’m furious,’ says Alex. She pulls Maggie in for a tight hug. She’s not calm, because Maggie is crying and if Rick was in front of her now she’d give him more than a broken nose to contend with. She’s not calm. But she’s not _surprised_ , maybe that’s the difference. She’d realised as soon as she figured out who was responsible for her kidnapping that he must have been watching them for some while. Maggie’s words and news of the Apartment Full of Crazy only confirm it.

It’s not the frightening part, for Alex. What’s frightening is that he almost won. She’s trying to ignore the unspeakable fear that one day, for all their promises, they might find themselves up against something they can’t beat.

But they beat Rick. He shouldn’t get to hurt them from where he is now.

Alex lets Maggie burrow into her shoulder. She feels warm, solid, and strong despite the stiffness in her frame or the quiet sniffles. Alex strokes her hair, murmuring reassurance. ‘He’s gone now.’

‘It’s not –’ She breaks off. Alex can feel Maggie screwing up her face against Alex’s collarbone.

‘It’s something else?’

Maggie shakes her head. ‘It’s not that easy to explain,’ she says. She pulls back, breathes out shakily. ‘I’m okay. Are you okay? After… yesterday?’

Alex knows deflection when she hears it – or she’s learning to, when she hears it from Maggie – but she thinks now’s not the best time to pursue it. For whatever reason, whatever it is that’s getting to her girlfriend so much, she has a sinking feeling she’ll be watching Maggie-in-the-wind if she tries to push it right now.

The question. Is she okay? ‘I have to be,’ Alex answers, with a shrug.

‘You know, it’s okay to be scared.’

‘No. Because the next thing won’t give me time to recover from a breakdown.’

She doesn’t like the look of impossible sympathy in Maggie’s eyes, so Alex kisses her on the forehead to soothe it away. She thinks of her brief but shocking panic yesterday, and her admission to Maggie – for all her faith in Maggie and Kara, how could she not have believed, as the oxygen escaped her, that they would get there too late? But she doesn’t think it’s death she fears. It’s not water. It’s definitely not Rick, or anyone like him.

She’s not sure what it is. Her own fear, perhaps. That’s the thing that will get her killed – or worse, someone else – more certainly than anything else.

Alex cups her hands around Maggie’s cheeks. ‘So I’m not going to have one.’

‘Sweetie, you’ll have to deal with it one day.’ Maggie’s eyes are red-rimmed but she looks like she’s going to be all right for the moment.

‘With what?’

‘Everything.’ Her hands sweep over the duvet. ‘Everything you do for the DEO, everything you’ve seen, everything you’ve faced, and Kara, and J’onn, your dad – it’s a lot, Alex.’

‘It’s my job, Maggie. It’s my life.’

‘That doesn’t make it easy.’

‘Yeah, I know.’ Alex raises her eyebrows at her girlfriend. ‘Too much to go into in one day. What happened to this being a vacation?’

‘Oh, now you agree it’s a vacation,’ says Maggie, smacking her on the thigh. ‘Fine. Are you going to tell me you’d like to take a swim?’

Alex thinks how normally by now she already would have. Would have left the house before the sun was up and tip-toed out by the back door. Would have braced herself before plunging in but only for the biting chill of the waves, turned lazy somersaults, swum along to the bluff and back before the tide changed. Would have returned exhilarated and refreshed, a satisfying ache in her limbs, and she thinks of sneaking back into the house to find Maggie still asleep or dozing and crawling back into the bed to sit and read until she woke up.

No. She does not want to take a swim. She doesn’t want to make this day harder than it already is.

‘How about we walk into Midvale? It’s not far. I need to show you round.’

 * 

Nothing, it turns out, is going to be easy today.

They get to the edge of town before Maggie freaks out. Flinches away from Alex’s hand. Stops walking. Alex makes it another pace or so before she stops too, and turns to face her. ‘Maggie, please tell me what’s the matter.’

Maggie is looking at the ground, shaking her head in that silent way she does. It takes her a moment to drag the words out. ‘You won’t get it.’

‘Not if you don’t tell me. Come on, Maggie, we’ve talked about keeping secrets from each other.’

‘It’s not – it’s not secret, I just – I can’t – I can’t do this right now.’

There it is. Maggie-in-the-wind.

‘Do you want to go back to the house?’

‘Yeah.’

Alex still doesn’t have a clue what’s really bothering her. The pain, the terror, the near-grief of a few days ago – she can see why Maggie is shaken, can see why she was jumpy about letting Alex out of her sight for a bit, but she’s seemed fine about that since and this isn’t even that. They’re together. In Midvale. Compared to the bustle and danger of National City, what could be so frightening about Midvale? The only person in sight is an old lady dead-heading flowers. She ignores them as they walk past her for the second time in as many minutes.

When they get in it seems like a bad idea to suggest going somewhere else immediately, particularly since Maggie has already pulled off her boots. They settle in to rewatch _Orphan Black._ Alex is fidgety, restless, and after the first episode Maggie pauses Netflix to kick her off the couch.

‘Go take a run or something. You’ve got ants in your pants.’

‘You’ll be okay here?’

‘I’ll be fine, Alex.’

So Alex goes, hands stuffed into her jacket pockets, hunched against the wind now blowing off the sea. She finds herself walking in the Midvale direction, almost unintentionally, not sure where she’s going until she realises her feet have traced the path to a barely-remembered part of town.

She hasn’t been here many times before, and not for more than ten years, but she thinks she recalls – yes. This street, that one, an ordinary-looking house in a row of ordinary houses.

Alex heads up to it and rings the doorbell.

No answer. She steps backwards on the porch, looking around the quiet street. A couple of dog-walkers have stopped to hold a conversation. A bird is causing little balls of shaking movement in a nearby maple. Alex counts quietly to thirty.

It’s something Kara said to her, about Rick. Rick who was watching them for a year. Rick with an apartment full of equipment. Rick with the means to _block J’onn’s mind-reading_ and Alex has never heard of that, not from a human, and there’s no evidence he was working with any aliens. If he was capable of all that, if he was smart enough to pull such a trick, why not simply break his dad out of prison himself? It took Maggie a matter of hours. Rick had years. Why go full Evil Villain on them in a twisted attempt at blackmail, when doing the job himself would have been easier?

But that’s what Kara said to her. About Rick and his dad. And his mom.

They had no idea, back then. Alex thinks of him sitting with Kara at lunch, because Alex herself had to miss school, knowing already what Kara was and what she could do. Did he hate her for it even then? Or only later?

She rings the doorbell again.

What is she supposed to say? _Your son tried to kill me. I thought you ought to know._ Or maybe, _If you’d loved Rick, he wouldn’t be in a cell right now._

(Hitting an unarmed civilian woman in broad daylight wouldn’t go down so well, though if half of what Kara said is true, it’s less than she deserves.)

No answer. Alex gives the door a slap, turns, and walks away.

* 

Maggie makes dinner. She banishes Eliza from her own kitchen, drafts Alex in for chopping duty, and pulls out all stops to serve a full meal with a flourish.

‘It’s a thank-you for having me,’ she insists, when Eliza tries the usual line about _you didn’t need to go to all this trouble._ ‘I can’t stay in your house and not do anything for you.’

‘Maggie, you are always welcome here,’ says Eliza. Then she blinks, as if hearing what she’s just said, and continues quickly with, ‘Let me fetch the bread. Do you want some bread, Alex?’ The answer is irrelevant; her mom’s already hurried to the kitchen.

Alex leans into Maggie. ‘Careful. Mom’s going to adopt another one.’

‘You think she likes me?’

‘Not as much as I do. But babe?’

‘Yeah?’

Alex indicates under the table, where Maggie is gripping her knee with fingers so tight they’ve gone pale. She hasn’t really let Alex out of her reach since she returned from her walk this afternoon. Alex doesn’t mind, but – ‘You’re going to leave a mark, and not the good kind.’

‘Sorry.’

Alex takes her hand before she can pull it away entirely. ‘It’s okay. Are you okay?’

Her mom returns before they can open that can of poisonous worms. Alex gives Maggie’s hand a squeeze, then forces herself to engage in a more light-hearted conversation about local sports. After her first glass of wine she reaches for the bottle, but Maggie is giving her a warning look and Alex decides she doesn’t need another lecture about self-medicating with alcohol tonight. She covers by offering Eliza a top-up instead.

‘Thank you, love,’ her mom says. ‘Tell me, how’s the water been?’

‘The. The water?’

‘You girls went swimming yesterday, didn’t you? Did you go this morning?’

*

The following morning, again before dawn, Alex heads to the bathroom. She sits wrapped in a towel and glares at the bath for a good five minutes.

The tub seems entirely unperturbed.

It occurs to Alex that she won’t win a staredown against an inanimate object any time soon. Her attempts to psych herself up are failing. She keeps getting sidetracked by the ridiculous of needing to. She’s handled worse, walked into gunfire, sliced her own skin open without flinching, launched herself into outer space inside a pod smaller than this bathroom, and knows she could do it all again. How can she be so weak about something so small?

(Twenty-plus hours and they were cutting it down to seconds.)

This isn’t even fear. It’s fear of the fear.

(The water is rising, rising, rising.)

Alex sighs and steps into the shower. 

* 

Kara texts like it’s going out of style. Usually she and Alex have two or three different message threads going at once. But they haven’t quite picked up those conversations where they dropped them; they’ve been texting over the last couple of days but it feels perfunctory, and Alex realises sometime after lunch that she hasn’t actually _spoken_ to her sister since letting her know about the trip.

Maggie is trying to make friends with the cat. Alex sits on the arm of the sofa and calls Kara, who picks up on the second ring. Alex is promptly treated to three rambling stories about an incident with the photocopier, James giving every person who asks a different explanation for the limp Kara _knows_ he got vigilante-ing, and an interviewee who thinks aliens are literal angels and demons come to battle for souls on Earth.

‘Did that all happen this morning?’

‘The photocopier’s been a running battle since Monday.’

Alex hums. ‘We haven’t spoken much.’

‘You’re on vacation.’

Not her too. Alex can’t be bothered to correct her. She says, on impulse, ‘Not from you, silly. If you don’t have any plans tonight, why don’t you come up to Midvale?’ She waves at Maggie, who has by now coaxed the cat onto her lap. Maggie glances up, continuing to give the cat a scratch behind the ears while listening in on the conversation.

‘You want me to come to Midvale?’

‘No, I’m inviting you but I don’t want you to come. Kara. Mom’s got a thing she can’t leave in the lab and she’ll be working late so it’ll just be the two of us.’ She mouths at Maggie, _Sorry. You don’t mind?_

Maggie shakes her head.

‘I don’t want to intrude.’

‘Please, Kara. I feel like I haven’t seen you in ages.’ She puts on her best coaxing voice: ‘I’ll let you pick a movie.’

‘Maggie doesn’t mind?’

Maggie must have heard this. Voice raised, she says, ‘Kara, if you don’t come I’ll march you up here myself.’

Kara snorts when she hears this. ‘I’d like to see you try. All right, fine. I’ll be there about eight?’

She shows up a quarter after with ice cream and doughnuts, and briefly flicks through the DVD cabinet before emerging triumphant with _Mary Poppins._ Maggie plasters on a close-to-convincing smile on her face and makes it through the whole film without a single derisory comment. The smile turns into a smirk when she catches Alex humming along to Let’s Go Fly A Kite.

Kara goes digging for another film, and when _The Sound of Music_ is brandished in front of them Maggie stretches her legs and says, ‘I think that’s my limit.’

‘You’re going to bed?’

‘I’ll read for a bit.’ She kisses Alex, humming a few bars of the song as she pulls away with a wicked grin. ‘Night, Kara.’

‘Night, Maggie.’

Kara settles at the far end of the couch from Alex. She watches the film with an odd sort of intensity, hugging one of the pillows to her chest, and Alex watches her. Ten minutes in she says, ‘Are you going to tell me what’s bothering you?’

‘What? No. Nothing’s bothering me.’

‘Are you saying this all seems perfectly normal to you?’ says Alex. She pulls her feet onto the cushions, swinging round to face her little sister. ‘And you practically throwing yourself out of my window last week – was that normal, too?’

‘I overreacted.’

‘Maybe. But after what happened, I’d be more surprised if you didn’t. You might be superhuman, Kara, but you’re still –’ She spreads her hands. ‘You thought you were going to lose me.’

Kara fiddles with the edge of the pillow. Pushes her glasses up. Pretends to be captivated by Julie Andrews falling out of a rowboat. Alex grabs the remote and mutes the film.

‘Kara.’

‘So did Maggie.’

Alex waits, confused, to see where this is going.

‘It’s not that she loves you. That’s great. I mean, of course she does, you’re wonderful and you deserve for – as many people as possible to love you, Alex, I’m not saying you shouldn’t…’

Alex catches on as Kara’s words fade into confusion.

‘It’s that I love her,’ she says. ‘That we mean so much to each other.’

Kara looks miserable, which is how Alex knows she’s right. She budges over and puts an arm around her sister. ‘Oh, come here.’

‘I’m sorry. I know I shouldn’t be jealous.’

‘Probably not. But it’s okay.’

‘It’s _not_ , Alex.’

‘Shh. Yes, it is. I might love Maggie – I _do_ love Maggie – but I loved you first. Nothing’s going to change that.’ What can she do, but say it over and over again until Kara believes her? How did they reach a point where she wouldn’t, without Alex noticing? ‘Even if other things change. I’ve got Maggie, and you’ve got Mon-El, and that’s okay. It doesn’t mean we’re going to replace each other. Or should I be worried you won’t need me because of Mon-El?’

Kara shakes her head. ‘But Maggie’s…’

Yes, Alex thinks Maggie means more to her than Mon-El does to Kara as well. ‘Maggie’s special, and she’s going to be part of my life for, I hope, a very long time. And yours, I suppose, and _ours_ , and maybe that’s not entirely fair to you because you’re not the one who fell in love with Maggie but I know you like her even if you do butt heads at times –’

‘We’re getting better at that, actually,’ says Kara, almost wryly.

‘Oh. Good. And Maggie’s very important to me. But she’s still not you.’ Less important, more, it doesn’t matter. Choosing between them is Alex’s idea of hell. (Kara. She thinks it will always be Kara, even without Supergirl. She’s scared Maggie will hate her when she realises this.) Alex put her hands on her sister’s shoulders. ‘Kara. You remember the Exodus ship?’

‘Yeah?’

‘If you hadn’t been able to stop the launch and I’d ended up across the galaxy and had to find my way home, and if it had taken fifty years, if it had taken a lifetime to get back to Earth, _we would still be sisters._ Do you understand?’

Kara presses her hands to the bridge of her nose, then re-orients her glasses. ‘Yeah.’ She laughs a little. ‘I would have found you sooner than that, though. Space travel’s not that hard.’

‘I’m trying to make a point here, Kara,’ says Alex, flinging her hands up in half-exasperated amusement.’

‘Yeah, okay, I get it. I get it.’

Alex isn’t certain she does. She can’t see to the bottom of this silent rift that’s opened between them. It’s Maggie and it’s not Maggie, because she’d never have thought Kara would believe Alex falling in love might destroy anything between them. She tosses Kara the remote and shifts across, closing the distance again, and gives her sister a swinging hug. ‘You know who loves you most, Kara?’

Kara squeals in the middle of rewinding the von Trapp children. ‘I love you most, too. Gerroff!’

And it very nearly feels the same as it always did.

Maggie is asleep when Alex reaches the bedroom, but not by the time Alex has changed into her pyjamas, cleaned her teeth and climbed into bed. She grumbles something muffled by the pillows.

‘Are you awake, babe?’ Alex whispers.

‘No.’

‘Okay.’

Maggie squints at her. ‘What godawful time is it?’

‘Not long after eleven…’ Alex can barely see her and she still can’t help staring. Maggie’s cute when she’s grumpy. She swallows down a smile in case it’s noticed, though it should be mostly invisible in the dark. ‘Kara went home.’

‘Did you sort things out with her?’

‘I’m not sure. Maybe.’ For the moment.

‘Tha’sgood.’

She might be half-asleep, but she manages to trap Alex’s arm across her stomach while re-settling herself. Alex listens to her breathing fade to a slow, easy rhythm and lets it lull her to sleep herself, hoping she won’t dream.

*

 ‘All right, you.’

(She says this under her breath. Alex would like to continue to be the only one awake. Not to mention, Maggie tends to laugh when she catches her talking to inanimate objects.)

The bathtub is, once again, unconcerned.

There’s steam slowly rising from the water. Alex climbs in, wincing at the temperature; this is the easy bit. She splashes water over her hair. Sinks low in the water, letting it sluice across her knees, remembering when the tub felt long ago like a space big enough to swim in.

She knows where she is and what she’s doing. Here is an edge, firm under her fingers, ready to be pulled against if she needs to haul herself out. It can’t take her by surprise.

Breathe.

And sink.

Eyes closed, Alex blows air out through her nose to stop the water rushing in until she runs out; and then a little longer, resisting the growing pressure in her chest until it turns to pain. She emerges, gasping, victorious, and sits almost bolt upright in the water. Then she leans further forward, curling over her knees, counting heavy breaths.

She’s not crying. Doesn’t want to. The relief simmers under something wilder and sharper. It feels like battle-fever.

*

‘Midvale today? Last chance.’

Alex is in the mood for a challenge. She feels like she could take on the world. Though that might still be easier than making her girlfriend talk.

‘Why not?’ she asks, after half a minute of silence.

‘Alex.’

‘No, Maggie, I don’t get this.’ Alex paces, turns, realises she’s doing it. Stops. ‘You’ve been fine going for walks in the middle of nowhere, you were fine in National City –’

‘I wasn’t fine in National City,’ Maggie snaps.

Wait, what? ‘You weren’t?’ She stares at her girlfriend, sitting at the end of the bed with an expression best described as mutinous. ‘Maggie, talk to me,’ she says, more softly.

‘You won’t get it.’

Alex folds her arms. ‘Try me.’

‘Rick was spying on you for a year,’ says Maggie, slowly. ‘I’m not bothered about him. I mean I hate to think that he was watching us, when we thought we were alone, when we thought we were in private, but – at least he won’t remember any of it.’

‘Except me punching him,’ says Alex, and Maggie manages a weak smile.

‘It’s the whole thing. The idea that someone can creep on our lives like that, watch us, wherever we are, even when we think we’re safe – hell, for all I know, even _here –_ and it clearly hasn’t even _occurred_ to you, maybe because being watched doesn’t bother you like it bothers me!’

Alex lets her finish. She says, ‘What makes you think it doesn’t bother me?’

‘Oh,’ says Maggie, with a bitter laugh, ‘It could be because you had a tracker in your arm, _which_ you didn’t bother to tell me about, and now you can’t wait to get it replaced!’

Alex tries to tamp down the anger she can feel rising. Maggie is the one who doesn’t understand. That’s Alex’s fault.

‘Yes. You’re right, I can’t wait. Because at least that way, if something happens to me, there’s a chance the good guys will get there before it’s too late!’

‘And you’re just so happy to know your life isn’t your own, Alex!’

‘It never has been!’

Maggie flinches.

Closing her eyes, Alex tries to lower her voice a couple of notches and continues with, ‘I’ve known people were watching me, watching my family, since the day Hank Henshaw came to recruit my dad. I was fifteen. I didn’t know – who they were, or what they did, but I knew they’d found Kara when nobody should even have known she was on Earth.’

She sits down beside Maggie. ‘When I joined the DEO I learned about all the technology we use. Learned how closely they’d been keeping an eye on Kara, and even on me, for years. I realised other people might be capable of the same thing. Bad people.’

This is going to scare Maggie even more, but it needs to be said. Alex won’t lie to her to protect her. Not more, she realises, than she already has.

She puts her hand on Maggie’s knee, and Maggie lets it stay there. OK, good. Alex concentrates, trying to pull her thoughts together instead of pulling her tight to comfort Maggie and make promises she can’t keep.

‘There are no cameras in my apartment, or Kara’s, or yours. The DEO doesn’t watch us on the street. But I’m always aware that someone else might. Anyone who’s come too close to figuring out Kara’s secret. And even knowing that, I didn’t see Rick coming. I probably won’t see the next one coming. It’s so easy to spy on people, and we’re targets, Kara and me, and anyone close to us.’

Maggie stares at her knee. There’s a frown creasing her face, more focused than upset, but stretching out so long that Alex finally goes, ‘Maggie? Please say something.’

‘You should have told me about the tracker.’

‘Yes. I should have. I didn’t want to scare you.’

This earns her a snort. Maggie clutches at Alex’s hand, and Alex hopes, prays under her breath, that she won’t let go.

‘How do you deal with it?’

(Badly, and by not thinking about it.) Alex says, ‘I’ve come to terms with it. It’s not easy.’

‘I thought the hardest thing would be having a girlfriend who fights aliens every day.’ Alex can’t help giving her a sharp look, which Maggie waves off. ‘Look, I understand about dangerous jobs. I’ve got one.’ Her eyes go distant for a moment, and Alex knows they’re both thinking of the same night. ‘But this isn’t – guns and fights. It’s something I’m not used to, and it’s going to be harder for me.’

‘I can only help you if you talk to me, Maggie. Even if it’s something I really don’t understand, I’ll always listen to you.’

Maggie nods, biting her lip. Then she reaches up to tuck Alex’s hair behind her ear. ‘I know how strong you are, and how brave, and how many people have got your back, and I am still terrified something will happen to you. You know I’m trying not to freak out when you go somewhere without me now, and that’s bad, but I can keep a lid on it. But this sense of being _watched_ all the time, of having eyes on me, on _us…_ ’ She sighs. ‘I was okay at work because there I’m just Detective Maggie Sawyer.’

‘So I’m the problem.’

‘ _No_ , Alex, you’re never the problem. Some of the things about your life make this hard but you wouldn’t be you if you’d chosen anything else and it is all so, so worth it to have you in mine. I don’t want to think about my life without you. So I will – figure out how to cope with this too.’

For Alex. Something in Maggie's manner is hesitant, as if she's worried this promise won't be enough, and Alex has two options right about now: kiss her or burst into tears. She goes with the first.

‘Would have been easier to have an ordinary life, huh?’

‘I work with ordinary people. They find plenty to complain about. And they don’t get to play with DEO guns.’

‘Excuse me. Neither do you. I don’t know how you convinced the guys to let you sign out all that gear.’

‘Uh, I was trying to save your _life._ ’ Maggie nudges her, and Alex nudges back, then swings Maggie onto her lap. Hears her girlfriend whisper in her ear, ‘You could at least pretend to be grateful, Danvers.’

‘Oh, I’m very grateful.’

Alex kisses Maggie’s nose, then her cheek, then finally her lips. The tiny corner of her mind not wholly focused on the weight of girlfriend in her lap remembers what her mom said, when she came out. Ordinary life. Eliza called her extraordinary, then. Alex is glad her mom took it well – that she’s proud of her – but she thinks Eliza is wrong about this. Having Supergirl for a sister is extraordinary. Fighting off Myriad, leading her team at the DEO, almost ending up on a one-way trip across the galaxy: maybe these things are extraordinary too. They wouldn’t be in a so-called _ordinary_ life.

But Maggie would. Being with Maggie, and falling for her so hard it feels like heartbreak by itself, is the most normal thing Alex has ever known. 

*

The ocean beckons.

The flutter in Alex’s chest is a cold one. She remembers the twist of wire against her palms. But she won’t think of that here. The sea is open to the sky, unbounded, warm under the midday sun. Later in the day than she’d usually start; but she had to wait for Maggie to wake up.

Breathe.

Maggie has deigned to wear her swimming things today. She looks delightfully summery in a green bikini, a colourful wrap around her waist, Jackie O sunglasses pushed up uselessly on her head. She squints a little against the sun on the water.

‘Go on, Danvers. Or are you going to stand there all day?’

Alex is already knee-deep. Strands of seaweed brush around her calves, and she thinks of the little fish in the water, silver and shining, she used to chase as a child. She aims a splash at Maggie then takes a step backwards, and another. Maggie ditches the wrap to follow her.

Alex Danvers, scared of water?

Maybe. Yes.

But that’s never been a good reason not to do anything.

This is her beach, her sea, her home. She’d like it back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's finished! It's really finished this time, I _swear. ___
> 
> __I'm not 100% happy with everything here. The writing process involved conversations with the characters like this:_ _
> 
> ___Me: "I need you two to not talk about it right now."_  
>  Maggie: "Why wouldn't we talk about it?"  
> Me: "Because you're gonna talk about it later. Right now you just need to hint about it."  
> Alex: "Hinting is for wusses. Where's my gun?" 
> 
> __So, yeah. But I can't see any way to fix any of the things I don't like about it right now, and I'm probably better off NOT trying to shoehorn in half a dozen more emotional threads (sorry Eliza!), so… Here you go. Fin._ _
> 
> __And leaving comments is like, totally rad, dude._ _
> 
> __EDIT: For a particularly embarrassing typo. (I left a square bracket in instead of finishing the scene. A thousand thanks to freakykaethe for pointing it out. I'm trying not to stress out too much about typos, but… That one had to go.)_ _


End file.
